News

Patch 11.3

Combat

In update 11.3, we added a few changes that are designed to make battles more dynamic and fun.

They touched on a number of aspects of our battle gameplay: both ordinary soldiers that now level up faster, the strengthening of the ‘super soldiers’, that enter the battlefield after the destruction of the enemy Arsenal, two new groups of neutral Touched which heroes will fight over on the top and bottom lanes, and even special bonuses that will be provided by a repeated Kiton kill!

Let’s take a closer look at all these changes.

Prime

In the conditions of the aggressive meta of today, many lane heroes at the beginning of the battle have to buy Health potions, spending their initial stocks of Prime and starting the lane phase without any active talents.

Often you want to take a skill from the general pool rather than a class skill at the start of a fight – for example “axe”, “training” or one of the new legendary Orders to have more opportunities to beat your opponent in the lane. On the whole, heroes are missing variety at the start of the game, and as we know, a good start is the key to victory!

In update 11.3, we’ve added changes both to the starting amount of prime that heroes get at the very beginning of the fight, and to how much Prime they earn over time.

Now heroes get 400 Prime instead of 300 at the start of the fight

Prime income per moment of time has increased and is now 3 instead of 2

This means that from the very beginning of the fight, heroes get more variety in choosing their talents and consumables, which allows the pace of the battle to grow faster.

Soldiers

The main aim of Soldiers is to help their heroes push their lane and destroy enemy buildings. However, heroes level up relatively fast, while it’s harder for Soldiers to level up. As a result, the battle is already nearly over by the time Soldiers reach their peak.

It is now much easier for Soldiers to help allied heroes on the battlefield – they gain levels faster, the ‘double’ support from Firethrowers / Destroyers starts to be noticeable earlier on, Warriors are stronger, and defense against the Main Building’s AoE attacks has increased significantly.

Soldier levels

The time for Soldiers to gain a new level has been reduced from 120 seconds to 90.

This means that Soldiers assisting heroes on the battlefield will start to provide noticeable support in destroying enemy Towers and other buildings much sooner

‘Double’ Destroyers / Firethrowers

As you know, toward the end of the game two Destroyers / Firethrowers begin to appear at once in the waves.

Now two big Soldiers at once will appear significantly sooner – from the 43rd Soldier wave or 22 minutes into the game.

Warriors

The special Soldiers that enter the battlefield after the enemy Arsenal is destroyed have also been given some nice changes. Their Health and Damage have been increased by 20%.

Main building

The damage from the Main Building’s AoE ability against Soldiers has been reduced by a factor of 3. At the same time, damage from this skill against enemy heroes remains the same.

Touched

It’s convenient enough for heroes in the middle lane to farm the woods if necessary to catch up to their enemy in terms of Prime or to just beef up. But for heroes in the top and bottom lanes, it’s much harder to earn additional Prime by killing Touched.

To make it easier to get Prime in the top and bottom lanes and to make laning riskier for heroes, we’ve lured in four Hobgoblins – 2 for each lane.

Hobgoblins

The top and bottom lanes now have small groups of neutral Touched.
Two hobgoblins appear roughly in the middle of the river 43 seconds after the first wave of Soldiers, and they respawn 90 seconds after dying.

Killing each of these creatures earns the hero 32 Prime and 30 more Prime for the team. Accordingly, killing two Hobgoblins at once earns the hero 64 Prime and 60 Prime is split among the team.

Kitton

Killing the first Kitton spawn was a serious source of overfarming at the early stage of the game. It provided a significant advantage to the team that did it. At the same time, toward the end of the game, killing Kitton earned the team practically nothing, which wasn’t entirely correct from the point of view of the battle pacing.

So we decided to review the bonuses that the team gets when they kill Kiton, to make it less significant on the one hand to get the advantage at the start of the game, but far more fun in terms of bonuses received for the team in the midgame and endgame.

Kiton now appears on the map at 6:30

Kiton’s respawn time is still 5 minutes

The number of Prime gained for killing Kiton is reduced to 150 for the team and 50 for the heroes involved in the kill

New bonuses for defeating Kiton

Repeatedly killing Kiton now earns the team permanent bonuses:

The first kill places the “First Kiton defeated!” status on the team and serves as a stepping stone to getting the next bonuses

The second kill increases the greatest of Strength or Intellect of all the team’s heroes by 5

The third kill increases the greatest of Strength or Intellect of the team’s heroes by 15

This means that defeating Kiton now has strategic value – by minute 17-18, the team has the ability to collect all the bonuses and get a noticeable advantage over the opponent.

Please note: bonuses for the second and third Kiton kill are permanent and last until the end of the battle. However, they do not stack – the maximum addition to the highest stat is 15

Talents

Absolute Dominance Set

Although the ‘axes’ were already weakened some time ago, this set still remains desirable in the build of a multitude of heroes: it helps beat additional Prime out of Soldiers and Touched, it often allows you to learn key abilities earlier and win your lane.

Apart from that, we couldn’t forget your numerous requests to reassess this set.

In consideration for all the above, we decided to reduce the amount of additional prime that a hero can obtain using this set both on the whole and for finishing off a Soldier or Touched.

Absolute Dominance

The amount of extra prime obtained for finishing a Soldier / Touched has been reduced from 6 to 5.

Its maximum increase has also been reduced from 800 to 675.

Mental Dominance and Strength Dominance

Killing 45 Soldiers / Touched will now result in 250 prime instead of 300

Greedy Dominance

The maximum increase in prime income now amounts to 325 instead of 400

Fury Dominance

For finishing Touched / Soldiers with the help of this talent, the hero will get 40 prime instead of 45:

The maximum increase in prime has been set to 250 instead of 300.

Heroes

Oaksmasher

After the previous rebalance, the Hero found acceptance in the hearts of players. However, some of his abilities, on which we initially wanted more of a focus, remained undervalued – primarily the hero's 'control'. We also made a few changes that will help the Hero more effectively deal with hordes of enemy soldiers and open up the intellect build.

The initial values of his defensive stats have increased:

The Hero's Stamina is now 60 (instead of 55)

The Hero's Will is now 50 (instead of 45)

Crack

With the help of the first passive skill, strength-build Dendromonsters were good at dealing with soldiers in the lane and monsters in the forest, leaving their intellect-based brethren behind. Now they can compete on a level playing field!

It's also worth noting that the changes concerned only the improvement of a skill, so the additional damage from Strength hasn't gone anywhere.

Every second attack deals additional damage based on the Hero's Intellect.

Wind Whistle

Acceleration duration reduced by 1 second

Dense Thorns

This talent, which is a decent control, hasn't worked out quite as we initially intended on the battlefield. The 'bushes' slowed heroes down very well when they didn't have any accelerating effects at a certain point in the game, but Heroes with any accelerating effect barely noticed them.

While an enemy Hero is within the effect radius of the skill, all acceleration effects active on the Hero have no effect. This means that, for example, the Amazon with a glyph of swiftness will be slowed when entering the skill's area of effect, but as soon as she leaves it, the acceleration from the glyph will return.

Sped up talent animation

Slow increased by 5%

Duration of the 'bushes' reduced by 1 second

Soul Catcher / Soul Reaper

The way the hero’s support ultimate works wasn’t entirely clearly explained in the talent’s description. In addition, we wanted to make it truly irreplaceable for a team game, since Soul Catcher is often in the very center of the fight.

And now, with the help of his ultimate, Soul Catcher can also add speed to his allies – of course, if he uses the skill while on Native Terrain.

Shadow of Defense

The talent’s tooltip now includes the information that the ultimate activates Ghost Shields on nearby heroes

Using the ultimate (placing Shields) now speeds up allied heroes if Soul Catcher activates the talent while on Native Terrain.

Fang / Claw

The hero’s alternative ultimate was very useful in team battles toward the end of the game, forcing enemy’s main damaging heroes to lose a significant amount of damage.

But in earlier stages of the game, Terrifying Howl wasn’t effective enough – especially when the hero was fulfilling the role of jungler/ganker.

Terrifying Howl

Now, if the hero hits fewer than three enemy heroes with the talent, then apart from reducing their damage, they’ll also be stunned for 1.5 seconds

The talent’s cooldown has been reduced to 80 seconds

Archer / Amazon

The courageous and quick Archer wasn’t always able to use her new ultimate ability with the greatest effectiveness

The relatively long cast time of the talent for such a mobile hero depended a lot on the team’s actions – enemies had to be fixed in place or at least slowed. To compensate for the difficulties in using Bombardment, we somewhat reduced the time required for drawing the bow and added damage:

Bombardment

The talent’s cast time has been reduced to 0.8 seconds

Damage increased by 5%

Inventor

Self-propelled gun turned out to be very interesting – during the first week players have found some interesting techniques how to make it more effective in the battle.

On the other hand, it is very difficult to use the gun, especially for “clever” Inventors. So we increased the gun itself a little bit and taught the gun how to share Prime with the Inventor, just as you wanted.

Self-propelled gun

Gun damage increased by 10%;

Gun Health increased by 10%;

Now when gun attacks enemy soldiers and buildings and kills them, Inventor receives Prime for the last hit.

Highlander / Immortal

Immortal hero with his ne ultimate ability got perfect control – when the enemy Hero is inactive for 2.5 sec Immortal can deal a lot.

On the other hand, the Hero could not survive in dramatic battles and play his role as a team tank. We will change it!

Sword from the sky

Cost decreased by 20 Energy

With this ability the Hero will absorb 10% of the damage till the end of the battle